Wednesday, February 10, 2016

dreampop a/k/a shoegaze

This year, the
most happening phenomenon in British alternative rock has been a wave of hazy
neo-psychedelic guitar groups, for which the UK rock press has yet to settle on
a label. Some critics call them "shoe-gazers", because of the groups'
onstage bashfulness. Others prefer the tag "The Scene That Celebrates
Itself": groups often fraternise together at each others' shows or at London's Syndrome club. But perhaps the most
useful term is "dream-pop", as it evokes these groups' blurry,
blissful sound and "out of this world" aura. Currently, the key
dream-pop groups (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Lush, Chapterhouse, Ride,
Swervedriver) have US
major label records already released or in the pipeline. As yet, records by
rising bands (Pale Saints, Boo Radleys, Moose, The Catherine Wheel, The
Telescopes) are only available as British imports, but may soon be picked up by
American labels.

Like all UK pop
'movements' (e.g. 1989/90's Manchester
scene), the groups in question tend to resent being lumped together. But
sufficient similarities exist to show that dream-pop is not a media
hallucination. Dream-pop groups combine nebulous, distorted guitars with
murmured vocals mixed so low that they're sometimes completely smudged into the
wall of noise. This dazed-and-confused style was pioneered by US groups like
Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr. But compared to their American forebears, the
British groups tend to be more fragile and androgynous, their swoony harmonies
reminescent of The Byrds or Love. Other influences include the ethereal
soundscapes of the Cocteau Twins, and the fractured "avant-garage"
rock of Sonic Youth.

Lyrically,
dream-pop celebrates rapturous and transcendent experiences, using drug or
mystical imagery. Disorientation and loss of self are both desired and feared.
Love is either presented as a purely halcyon experience, or as a "chaos of
desire" (My Bloody Valentine), in which subconscious undercurrents of
violence surface. Other songs deal with bewilderment, desperation, and
despondency. A common theme is the desire to transcend the drab confines of
everyday life, by "going nowhere fast" (Ride's "Drive
Blind", Swervedriver's "Sandblasted").

This yearning for
escape or oblivion relates to the groups' socio-political environment. After 12
years of Conservative government, idealism and constructive political
involvement seem futile. At the same time, dropping out is an increasingly
unviable option. Struggling indie bands used to live off unemployment benefit.
But during the Eighties, the government waged a war of attrition against this
bohemian "dole culture",
harassing claimants in order to pressurise them into join government
training schemes. Now Prime Minister Major's government is attempting to make
squatting (another refuge for impoverished musicians) illegal. As well as
deteriotating living conditions, young indie bands suffer the
"twentysomething" malaise that was widely discussed in the USA earlier
this year.

Having grown up in the aftermath of punk, they're making abrasive
guitar rock at a time when the mainstream is dominated by baby-boomer music.
Confronted by a climate of circumscribed options, both politically and in terms
of youth culture, dream-pop groups retreat from public life and long-term goals
in order to look for transcendence in their private lives and the here-and-now.
They're dreaming their lives away.

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It was a
London-based quartet called My Bloody Valentine who pioneered the dreampop sound.
My Bloody Valentine rose to prominence in 1988 with two EP's, "You Made Me
Realise" and "Feed Me With Your Kiss", and the album "Isn't
Anything", which featured a self-invented technique the group's leader
Kevin Shields calls "glide guitar". This involves "modulating
the tone directly, using a tremolo arm, rather than processing it through
effects". Instead of distinct riffs, the technique produces an amorphous
drone that seems to swarm out of the speakers and envelop the listener, with an
effect that's at once visceral and disembodied. The normal, direct
correspondence between the players' physical gestures and the sounds produced
is severed, to the extent that the group seem to disappear in their own music.

My Bloody
Valentine developed this sound further on 1990's "Glider" EP. On the
track "Soon," ghostly guitar harmonics and backing vocals hovered
over a churning funk groove influenced by rap and acid house. ""The
weird sampling on hip hop records was what encouraged us to attempt to create
eerie effects on the guitar in the first place," says Mr Shields.
"Soon" won the admiration of Brian Eno, who described it as "the
vaguest music ever to have been a hit". Appropriately, their next EP
"Tremolo" ventured even closer to Mr Eno's ambient music. On the
blissfully disorientating "To Here Knows When", My Bloody Valentine
sampled their own guitar feedback and played it on a keyboard. "Soon"
and "To Here Knows When" both appear on the group's new album
"Loveless" (Sire 26759-2), an ear-baffling tour de force of symphonic
chaos that wholly justifies Mr Shields contention that "the electric
guitar still contains an unexplored universe of noises."

Of the groups that
emerged in My Bloody Valentines' wake, Slowdive are probably the most
distinctive. Unfortunately, their debut album "Just For A Day" set
for US release next January on SBK Records, doesn't display that originality as
effectively as the British import-only EPs that precede it. Slowdive's sound is
more serene than MBV. Relying heavily on effects pedals, the group unfurl
billowing wafts of gauzy sound, amongst which nestle the pallid, demure vocals
of Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell. Songs like "Shine", "Catch
The Breeze" and "Morningrise" have an idyllic, pastoral air,
doubtless inspired by the Oxfordshire countryside around the group's hometown.
"Just For A Day" is suffused with an elegaic, sepia-tinted
melancholy. Lyrically, there's a yearning for lost innocence. On their first
EP, "Avalyn" turned Avalon (the Edenic "isle of apples" of
Arthurian legend) into a girl's name. Mr Halstead confirms that many of the
songs are about "evoking certain poignant moments that you hark back to
nostalgically".

Slowdive belong to
a new generation of British groups too young to remember punk rock. Mr Halstead
talks of being more influenced by Pink Floyd than The Sex Pistols. Slowdive's
formative pop experiences involve post-punk groups like The Cure and Siouxsie
and The Banshees, whose arty approach was closer to Seventies progressive
groups than punk's angry minimalism. Mr Halstead says Slowdive avoid social
comment, hoping rather "to create something big and beautiful and sort of
timeless." This art for art's sake approach has led some to dismiss
Slowdive and other dreampopsters as apolitical, middle class aesthetes.

Two other groups,
Ride and Chapterhouse, offer a neat-and-tidy, classical structured version of
the My Bloody Valentine sound. Chapterhouse's "Whirlpool"
(RCA/Dedicated 3006-2-R13) blended clinically layered guitars, fey vocals and
groove-oriented rhythms, to become a US college radio hit this summer. Ride's slightly more abrasive
"Nowhere" album (Sire 26462-2) and EP releases have enjoyed chart
success in Britain.
Fronted by two female singer/guitarists, Lush are a London quartet whose second Reprise album
"Spooky" is set for January release. Lush's iridescent mosaic of
spangly guitars and frosted harmonies owes a lot to the studio techniques of
their producer Robin Guthrie from the Cocteau Twins, but is captivating
nonetheless.

At the opposite end of the spectrum lies Swervedriver, the most
Americanophile and least androgynous of the dreampop groups. Rooted in the
"raw power" of Detroit
group like The Stooges and MC5, but filtered through the innovations of My
Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth, Swervedriver's sound simulates the
exhilaration of pure speed. Songs like "Pile Up" and "Son Of
Mustang Ford", from the debut album "Raise" (A&M
75021-5376), are steeped in the mythology of the American freeway.

The problem for
the first wave of dreampop groups is that as their style has become
increasingly identifiable and marketable, they're having to compete with an
onrush of opportunistic imitators. Pioneers like My Bloody Valentine are
obliged to reinvent themselves again and again, in order to preserve their
uniqueness. It's the oldest story in rock'n'roll.